Trees need drip watering

Slow flow permeates soil to the roots

Thomas Metthe/Reporter-News
Alex Ortega Jr., with Thornton's Tree Service grinds a tree stump that was cut down after it had died on Monday afternoon, Aug. 8, 2011.

Tommy Metthe

Victor Cristales/Reporter-News
Abilene parks department employee Rick Sandee fills 30 gallon barrels with water next to trees on the median near the intersection of South 14th Street and Sayles Boulevard on Monday. The water will trickle out.

Victor Cristales/Reporter-News
Rick Sandee removes an empty water barrel from the median near the intersection of South 14th and Sayles Boulevard. The City of Abilene is using the barrels to water the trees on the Sayles median from South 1st to South 14th streets.

If you think it's difficult to keep the trees in your yard alive during a drought, consider Richard Rodgers.

As the parks supervisor for the city of Abilene, Rodgers is responsible for keeping thousands of trees across town green in the midst of the most severe one-year drought in the state's history.

"I have been surprised at how well things are doing," he said. "A lot of these trees have never seen this type of summer, just like we haven't."

City employees know better than anyone the scarcity of water as a resource and the restrictions that entails, he said. His five crews spend a total of 80 hours a week calculating and meeting the moisture needs of the city's trees.

Many of the city's trees are watered on drip systems, Rodgers said. A slow drip emitter on a plastic line delivers a gallon of water per hour to a tree.

Although many homeowners lack that resource, he said they can achieve the same thing by watering as slowly as possible.

"With the clay soil we have here, the only way to get adequate moisture is to water it deep and slow," he said.

Watering quickly results in runoff, leading to unnecessary waste. The trick is to turn a hose to the lowest setting, Rodgers said, and allow the water to run slowly at the base of a tree for 45 minutes to an hour.

"The slower the drip, the deeper it will go," he said.

The goal is to send the water at least 6 to 8 inches below the soil's surface, he said.

This summer, the drip systems have been supplemented with water barrels, which are carried by workers to trees throughout the city.

City crews have been successful so far this year in keeping trees alive, Rodgers said, but even they are not exempt from loss.

A few of the city's trees have died this summer, he acknowledged, probably from a combination of a harsh winter and a dry summer.

However, he encouraged people to be sure to give trees some time before assuming they're too far gone to be saved.

"If it's lost all the leaves and it's brittle," he said, "I would scrape the bark back close to where the leaves normally appear. If it's green, it's still holding on."

Oftentimes, especially with older trees, one dry season won't completely do them in, he said.